"Precipitancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had once said, "than let it go to her own kith and kin. And if she do hate any human creature, she do hate Barty Burgess." She assented, however, to Dorothy's proposal; and, though Mrs. Stanbury and Priscilla were astounded by the precipitancy of the measure they did not attempt to ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... were well in the stream, and some had gained the bank, on the Canadian side, when eighteen or twenty of the red children of the forest, sprang to their feet, and gave a yell, so hideous, that the Americans, stricken with panic, fled with almost ludicrous precipitancy. So terror-stricken, indeed, were the valiant host, that they left arms, accoutrements, and haversacks, behind them. No further attempt was made by General Hull, on Amherstburgh. It would have been captured with great difficulty, if it could have been captured ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... the Convention were plainly growing tired and there are evidences of haste in the work of the last few days. There was a tendency to ride rough-shod over those whose temperaments forced them to demand modifications in petty matters. This precipitancy gave rise to considerable dissatisfaction and led several delegates to declare that they would not sign the completed document. But on the whole the sentiment of the Convention was overwhelmingly favorable. ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... Indra. Beholding the ruler of the Pandavas impetuously rushing against him, Salwa, that lion among kings, quickly urged his elephants, O king, for the destruction of Drupada's son. The latter, seeing the animal approaching with precipitancy, pierced it with three foremost of shafts, polished by the hands of the smith, keen, blazing, endued with fierce energy, and resembling fire itself in splendour and force. Then that illustrious hero struck the animal at the frontal globes with five other whetted and foremost ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Vatican, till his own head swam with his eagerness, and his limbs stiffened with the cold. He had promptly set up a life-sized figure which he called an "Adam," and was pushing it rapidly toward completion. There were naturally a great many wiseheads who smiled at his precipitancy, and cited him as one more example of Yankee crudity, a capital recruit to the great army of those who wish to dance before they can walk. They were right, but Roderick was right too, for the success ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... precipitancy into the story of his love for Cornelia, and of the inexplicably cruel way in which it had been brought to a close. "And yesterday," he continued with a sob in his voice—"yesterday I heard that her father had ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... what she went for she fetched something. Mrs. Turner could fetch a conclusion from everything she saw, and was happy in her facility. Time and again her patient lord had ventured to point a moral from her repeated mistakes of judgment, and to suggest less precipitancy in the future; but to no good purpose. Mrs. Turner's faith in the justice of her prognostications was sublime, though not unusual. It has been within the compass of our experience to meet and know undaunted women who, day after day, could, with equal positiveness, announce their ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... not speak for a long time, but sat looking at the child whose face now wore an old and troubled look. In his mind he was revolving a plan which, with, his usual precipitancy, he resolved to carry into effect at once. But he said nothing of it to Jerry, whose attention was diverted by the entrance of Charles and the preparations for luncheon, which on the little girl's account, was served with more care ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... evening at 'The Porch' and Glemham is on the way." He paid his bill, slipped over to the stables and lent a hand to the saddling of his horse. Mitchelbourne, though for once in his life he regretted the precipitancy with which he welcomed strangers, was still sufficiently provoked to see the business to its end. His imagination was seized by the thought of this fat and vulgar person fleeing in terror through English lanes from a Barbary Moor. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... guns and some 9-pounders. The Royals and 31st followed, and then the Queen's 60th Rifles and 15th Punjaubees. Some Chinese batteries and junks were silenced; and then Sir John Michel ordered up the infantry, who rushed into the fortress, and bowled over the Tartars, as they scampered with precipitancy from the wall across the open into the village, while rockets, whizzing through the air over their heads in graceful curve, spread dismay among their masses, ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon the ability to form the simple elements, or sounds of letters, by the organs of speech, in the manner which the custom of the language demands; and, in the next place, upon the avoidance of that precipitancy of utterance, which is greater than the full and accurate play of the organs will allow. If time be not given for the full enunciation of any word which we attempt to speak, some of the syllables will of course be either lost ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... position in the structure of the bone or the brain, have been so perpetually contradicted by fact; its prognostics of capacity have been so perpetually defeated; and its mistakes of character have been so constantly thrown into burlesque by the precipitancy and presumption of its advocates—that common sense has abandoned it altogether; it has by common consent been abandoned to enthusiasts; and to assert its right to the name of a Science, would now hazard the title of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... the general, attired in full uniform for a ball, came darting in with such precipitancy that, hitching his boot in the carpet, and getting his sword between his legs, he came down headlong, and presented a curious little bald place on the crown of his head to the eyes of the astonished company. Nor was this the worst of it; for being rather corpulent ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... feeling of perfect security to one of miserable doubt, at finding the field already taken, nearly drove Mr. Murray into a precipitancy that he might have regretted forever. As it was, he answered Kittie's inquiries for Pansy, in a pre-occupied way, that was surprising, and seemed too much pleased with that envelope to ever lay ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... legislature are about to enter into a state of activity: one sentiment will animate them. Confiding in the promises of your Majesty, we resign to you, we resign to our representatives and to the chamber of peers, the care of revising, consolidating, and perfecting in concert, without precipitancy, without concussion, maturely, and with wisdom, our constitutional system, and the institutions that must ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... she would be there—and THEN! She remembered suddenly she had not yet determined what to do. Should she go on at once to San Francisco, or telegraph to her father and await him at San Jose? In either case a new fear of the precipitancy of her action and the inadequacy of her reasons had sprung up in her mind. Would her father understand her? Would he underrate the cause and be mortified at the insult she had given the family of his old friend, or, more dreadful still, would he exaggerate her ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... over the brief but significant scene he lashed himself for his foolish precipitancy. He had not reckoned on Rachel's tense, passionate absorption of all her feeling in the scenes at the tent which were so new in her mind. But he did not know her well enough even yet to understand the ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... Hayne was, perhaps, severest to himself. His poetic standards were high. In his maturer years he blamed the precipitancy with which, as a youth, he had rushed into print. There is an interesting marginal note, as his son tells us, in a copy of his first volume of verse, in which The Cataract is pronounced "the poorest piece in the volume. Boyish and bombastic! ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... Ultimatum (October 9th-11th) in the wholesale expulsion of the British subjects still remaining in the two Republics. Assuming that this measure was justifiable on military grounds, there can be no excuse for the brutal precipitancy with which it was enforced. It crowded the colonial ports with homeless and impoverished fugitives; it inflicted unnecessary suffering and pecuniary loss upon inoffensive and innocent non-combatants, both European ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... When the precipitancy of a man's wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in—woe be to truth! and woe be to the vehicle and its tackling (let 'em be made of what stuff you will) upon which he breathes forth the disappointment of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... veil, and the sodden dooryard, and the wild rocks and chasms of the gorge, adown the trough of which a stream unknown to the dry weather was tumbling with a suggestion of flight and trouble and fear in its precipitancy. "I'm well, well as a bear; and I'm getting fat as a bear, doing nothing. Feel my arm. I'm just following the example of the bears about this time of the year,—hibernating, going into winter quarters. I'm going to get this place into ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... who was incapable of sustained thought, and who had completely forgotten and recalled the subject of the cottage-rents several times since the departure of Mrs. Grant, nevertheless at once diagnosed the cause of the trouble; and with her usual precipitancy began to repulse an attack which had not even been opened. Mrs. Lessways was not good at strategy, especially in conflicts with her daughter. She was an ingenuous, hasty thing, and much too candidly human. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... following his glance. "Eh?—What?" There is a second pause, then, rising to his feet with much precipitancy, he flings his cigar to the winds, and, before Owen has time to recover from his astonishment at these proceedings, is well out of sight. A turn in the lawn has hidden Brian and the advancing figures ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Lewson could not tell, but he and his two other comrades had borne things almost beyond endurance since he commenced his search, and now there was far too much at stake for him to increase the odds against them by any undue precipitancy. He was then in a dangerous mood, but he had laid his plans with grim, cold-blooded caution, and he meant to ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the valleys of the Morava and the Maritsa, with its large towns, Philippopoli and Adrianople, is certainly not more chimerical and absurd than many that are now projected. Who can doubt of its ultimate accomplishment, in spite of the alternate precipitancy and prostration of enterprise? Meanwhile imagination loses itself in attempting to picture the altered face of affairs in these secluded regions, when subjected to the operation of a revolution, which posterity will pronounce to be greater than those which made the fifteenth ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... accuse myself of precipitancy; but I soon remembered that every thing ought to be hazarded, where every thing is at stake. My fears were not for myself; and, while my arms were free, could I have come upon them thus suddenly, success was far from improbable. Vice is always cowardly; and, difference ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... distinguish the obscure but not unmajestic law of change from the sorry custom of reaction. Change hastes not and rests not, reaction beats to and fro, flickering about the moving mind of the world. Reaction—the paltry precipitancy of the multitude—rather than the novelty of change, has brought about a ferment and corruption of opinion on Tennyson's poetry. It may be said that opinion is the same now as it was in the middle of the nineteenth century—the same, but turned. All that was not worth having of admiration ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... my precipitancy, Mr. President," said Baker apologetically. "Thinking you were an accomplice of this lady's, I tried only ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... no need for such precipitancy. Miss Tomalin has not yet been informed of what is going on. Of course, she is her own mistress, free to accept any invitation that may be offered her. The Rookes seem to be quiet people, in easy circumstances; ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... youth, but found not what he sought. The welcome and the look of mutual confidence were evidently forced on both sides; shame on one side and dread on the other had forever separated their hearts. A sight which brought back to the prince's soul the full sense of his guilty precipitancy could not be gratifying to him, while G——— felt that he could no longer love the author of his misfortunes. Comforted, nevertheless, and in tranquillity, he looked back upon the past as the remembrance ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... dreaded was that the administration party would take advantage of the insolent and outrageous conduct of the French minister to show the folly of precipitancy, and to gain popularity and strength for itself. Madison soon writes to Jefferson to acquaint him with the reaction taking place in Virginia, "in the surprise and disgust of those who are attached to the French cause, and who viewed this minister as ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... sudden crisis of danger arose, usually threw himself blindly over the side of the canoe on to the ice with the lightness and agility of a harlequin. He recked not whether he came down on his head or his feet, and more than once nearly broke his neck in consequence of his precipitancy. But La Roche was no coward, and the instant the first burst of excitement was over he rushed to render effective assistance. Bryan, too, although not so mercurial as La Roche, was apt to lose self-command for about five ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... been wounded in the back and hands in the battle, and to have fled with great precipitancy from the field of battle. He obtained, it is supposed, that shelter which, even under the most dangerous and disastrous circumstances, was rarely refused to the poor Jacobites. The exact spot of his retreat ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... more perpendicular descents, and fairly sliding or running down the shorter ones. They saw their friends waiting for them; and a lesser figure than the rest hastened towards them, scaling the steep slopes with a good will, precipitancy, and wild hurrahs of exultation, that would not let them doubt it was Walter, before they could see his form distinctly, or hear his words. Rose ran headlong down the last green slope, and was saved from falling by fairly ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... convicted on some charge or other, and be put to death, had been already determined by the priestly judges; their failure to find witnesses against Him threatened to delay the carrying out of their nefarious scheme. Haste and precipitancy characterized their procedure throughout; they had unlawfully caused Jesus to be arrested at night; they were illegally going through the semblance of a trial at night; their purpose was to convict ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... had come to Governor Shannon. To retrieve somewhat the precipitancy of his militia orders and proclamations, he wrote to Sheriff Jones, December 2, to make no arrests or movements unless by his direction. The firm defensive attitude of the people of Lawrence had ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... rebellion assumed proportions that led to the recognition of the Confederacy as a belligerent by the civil, judicial, and military authorities of the Union; a recognition by foreign powers would then have been simply an act of impartial neutrality. But, declared with such precipitancy, recognition could be regarded only as an act of unfriendliness to the United States. The proof of this ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... that they had taken us for a torpedo boat, and seeing the Chinese flag had no hesitation in opening fire on so dangerous a neighbour, as they deemed us. They seemed very scantily pleased when told our real character, and learnt that their precipitancy had perhaps lost them a little promotion, or at least honourable mention, as capturers of important despatches, as I understand them to ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... Caius Julius (for you have been instructed to think both as a poet and as a philosopher), that among the hundred hands of Ambition, to whom we may attribute them more properly than to Briareus, there is not one which holds anything firmly. In the precipitancy of her course, what appears great is small, and what appears small is great. Our estimate of men is apt to be as inaccurate and inexact as that of things, or more. Wishing to have all on our side, we often leave those we should keep by us, run after those we should ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Testament, which she took from him with a trembling hand and forthwith dropped with a resounding bang on to the floor of the witness-box, diving after it with such precipitancy that her bonnet jammed violently against the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... Austria was significant. The Austrian Minister at Belgrade, as before stated, rejected it as unsatisfactory and immediately left the Servian capital. He acted, in short, with a precipitancy that indicated that he was acting under instructions. This was made very evident by what immediately followed. When news came on July 28th that war had been declared and active hostilities commenced, it was accompanied ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... a maxim with us, my dear sir, never to be premature in anything, especially when it may be—very prejudicial; you've really no idea, my dear Mr. Titmouse, of the world of mischief that is often done by precipitancy in legal matters; and in the present stage of the business—the present stage, my dear sir—I really do see it necessary not to—do anything premature, and ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... will be no women besides our own party," Lady Bareacres said, after reflecting upon the invitation which had been made, and accepted with too much precipitancy. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grossest that I ever was guilty of in all my life. I have frequently made this observation, that when men have, through fear of miscarriage, hesitated a long time about any undertaking of consequence, the remaining impressions of their fear commonly push them afterwards with too much precipitancy upon the execution of their design. And this was my case. It was with the greatest reluctance that I determined to accept the dignity of a cardinal, because I thought it too mean to form a pretension to it without certainty of success; and no sooner ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... crowd. At a short distance from the track there were hastily arranged car-cushions, coats, and loose coverings thrown down on a bank half covered with snow. Here the bearers laid Wynne, hurrying back to their work with a precipitancy ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... Hebronius, who does not appear among his flock until he has freed himself of the Catholic religion, as he has of the Jewish and the Protestant, sees, with dismay, the evil condition of his disciples, and regrets, too late, the precipitancy by which he renounced, then and for ever, Christianity. "But, as he had no new religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown more prudent and calm, he did not wish to accuse himself unnecessarily, once more, of inconstancy and apostasy, he still maintained all the exterior ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I am anxious that you should not accuse me of acting with precipitancy in this matter; that when I shall renew my application to you, you may remember that I have had due and sufficient time for reflection. Addio, Signor Giovacchino," said the Marchese, reverting to the more friendly form of address; "addio, ed ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... with Ashley on the previous day and the one great decision to which they had led him up. It would have gratified Ashley, could he have overheard, to note the skill with which she conveyed precisely that quality of noble precipitancy in his words and resolutions which he himself feared they had lacked. If a slight suspicion could have risen in his mind, it would have been that of a certain haste on her part to forestall any possible questioning of his eagerness such as he had occasion to observe in himself. That ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... along, me frequently reproaching Sweet Caps for his precipitancy in spilling the beans. We passes through the village of Plentiful Valley without stopping and walks on and on and on some more, until we observes a large, prosperous-looking building of red brick, like a summer hotel with a lawn in front and a high stone wall in front of that. A large number ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... ever my own view. I feel, in my heart, that what Mr. Wilding says is right. It is but what I said myself, and Captain Matthews with me, before we embarked upon this expedition. We were in danger of ruining all by a needless precipitancy. Nay, man, never stare so," he said to Grey, "I am in it now and I am no' the man to draw back, nor do I go so far as Mr. Wilding in counselling such a course. We've set our hands to the plough; let us go forward in God's name. Yet ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... be ruled by another rule, yet are we willing to take it for so much; for even that will prove there is yet a malignant party in Scotland, because many are standing under church censures [albeit we are sorry there is so much precipitancy and haste in taking off the censures].(342) Those involved in the late rebellion are standing under a sentence of the commission,(343) declaring them to be following their old malignant designs; few of them are yet admitted to profession of repentance. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... obstacles which beset him. With the aspect of an angry rather than a disappointed man, he paced the office with rapid and irregular strides. He could devise no expedient. A lady's will is absolute, and he must bend in submission. He blamed his own tardiness one moment, and his precipitancy the next; then he cursed his ill luck, and vented his anger and disappointment ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... that she had met Clement Westall. She had seen at once that he was "interested," and had fought off the discovery, dreading any influence that should draw her back into the bondage of conventional relations. To ward off the peril she had, with an almost crude precipitancy, revealed her opinions to him. To her surprise, she found that he shared them. She was attracted by the frankness of a suitor who, while pressing his suit, admitted that he did not believe in marriage. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... one of the secretaries to Government, upon the present favourable bias of government and the public in general to favour all plans for doing good, he told me that he believed the whole was owing to the prudent and temperate manner in which we had acted; and that if we had acted with precipitancy and indiscretion, he had every reason to believe the general feeling would have been as hostile to attempts to do good as it ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... even when other movements depended on it, the subordinate officer could properly exercise his own discretion as to the time and manner of its execution. Warren was a skilled engineer officer and held too closely in an emergency to purely scientific principles. He had none of Sheridan's precipitancy, and did not believe in violating, under any circumstances, principles of war taught by the books. Before a subsequent court of inquiry Warren produced what appeared to be overwhelming testimony from experienced and distinguished ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... instrument, selected the middle knob on the right-hand side and pulled it briskly; whereupon a first-floor window was thrown up and a head protruded. But it afforded us a momentary glimpse only, for, having caught the sergeant's upturned eye, it retired with surprising precipitancy, and before we had time to speculate on the apparition, the street-door was opened and a man emerged. He was about to close the door after ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... that was his of inheritance, had an instinctive truth as allied to finance; but, unfortunately for Philip Crane, chance and a speculative restlessness led him amongst men who commenced with the sport of kings. With acute precipitancy he was separated from the currency that had come to him. The process was so rapid that his racing experience was of little avail as an asset, so he committed the first great wise act of his life-turned his back upon the race course ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... Cullen was saying, and, supposing some man was insulting her, I acted as I did." Then I let go of him, and, turning, I continued, "I am very sorry, Miss Cullen, if I did anything the circumstances did not warrant," while cursing myself for my precipitancy and for not thinking that Miss Cullen would never have been caught in such a plight with a man unless she had been half willing; for a girl does not merely threaten to call for help if she really ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... of Judah, was its soul; Amasa, also of Judah, its arm; but the rest of Israel was also drawn into the rebellion, and only the territory to the east of Jordan remained faithful. Thither David betook himself with precipitancy, for the outbreak had taken him completely by surprise. At Mahanaim, which had once before been the centre from which the kingdom was regained, he collected his faithful followers around him with his 600 Cherethites ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... The precipitancy of this declaration served merely to confirm the opinion she had already conceived of the weakness of his understanding: but the obstinacy of Mr Harrel irritated and distressed her, though weary of expostulating with so hopeless ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... 19th of July, 1815, during the ever memorable Hundred Days, I was writing to my best friend, when I received a visit from la Princesse d'Henin and Colonel de Beaufort, who entered the room with a sort of precipitancy and confusion that immediately struck me as the effect of evil tidings which they came to communicate. My ideas instantly flew to the expectation of new public disaster, when Madame d'Henin faintly pronounced the name of M. d'Arblay. Alarmed, I turned from one to the other in speechless ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... the dignity of my office to parley further with the prisoners, the sheriff observer to his companion, while they both retired with a precipitancy that Captain Hollister mistook for the signal ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... intoxicated with the spectacle. Now that each battalion consisted of only a few insurgents he had to name them yet more hastily, and his precipitancy gave him the appearance ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... answer, had fallen senseless at the wicket. Rosina was present at the narration; her heart told her who it was; also told her that I had not been faithless. Joy at my fidelity, and grief at her own precipitancy, which rendered it unavailing, overpowered her, and she was led to her cell in a state as ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... a shivering precipitancy in me, which makes emotion of any kind a thing to be shunned. It is my nerves, my nerves.... Such a nervous system as I have.... Thomas feeling in his breast for comfort and finding bilious fever.... All palpitating, fluttered ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... not," said Richard, "and I blamed Nicholas much for his precipitancy in giving the order; but he replied he had been held up latterly as a favourer of witches, and must endeavour to redeem his character by a display of severity. Were it not for Alizon, I should rejoice that the noxious brood should at last be ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... without some argumentative reason to support it, shows great precipitancy of idea. It is like raising a sumptuous pile for the mere gratification of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... broken and destruction failing to follow the awful sacrilege, the people, with that childlike precipitancy which has always characterized them, jumped to the conclusion that their gods were a weak and wretched swindle, just as they formerly jumped to the conclusion that Captain Cook was no god, merely because he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the ship made a prosperous voyage to her destined port. Eugene's mother received a letter from him, in which he lamented the precipitancy of his departure. The voyage had given him time for sober reflection. If Annette had been unkind to him, he ought not to have forgotten what was due to his mother, who was now advanced in years. He accused himself of selfishness, in only listening to the suggestions of his own inconsiderate ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... in a trance, without will-power over his trigger finger, and Pete was the last man in the world that you would expect to lose his nerve. Jim Galway being the one calm observer, whose vision had not been disturbed by precipitancy in taking cover, let ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... the story and protestations of Fathom; and though he would not justify that part of his conduct by which the term of his good fortune was abridged, he could not help excusing an indiscretion into which he had been hurried by the precipitancy of youth, and the allurements of an artful woman. Nay, with the utmost warmth of friendship, he undertook to wait upon Trapwell, and endeavour to soften him into some reasonable ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... fixed on slips of bamboo, were dipped, and given to each person. The heat, dust, stench of the unwashed multitude, noise, and increasing familiarity of the lower orders, warned us to retire, and we effected our retreat with precipitancy. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... be at all altered within such a time as it would be possible to wait. I am rather inclined towards bringing the business forward on Thursday; and yet I am very apprehensive of the effect which might be produced by any appearance or imputation of precipitancy. ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... the steady firmness of moral force and the strong effect of determination, acting deliberately, awed the most savage men, and suppressed a scene of carnage, which would have instantly followed the least precipitancy or exertion of physical force. —J. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... de Vergennes, to excuse the precipitancy in signing the treaty, has said to the Ministers of the Republic at Paris, that, on one side, America, who declared herself exhausted, feared an insurrection if the taxes were increased, demanded through Dr Franklin twenty millions for the ensuing campaign, if there were one, and wished ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... long before England inclines to follow their example. It behoves us then to qualify ourselves for our mission. We must dare our destiny. We can do this, and can only do it by early measures which shall effect the abolition of slavery, without precipitancy, without oppression, without injustice to slaveholders, without civil war, with the consent of mankind, and the approbation of Heaven. The restoration of the right of suffrage to free men is the first act, and will draw after it in due time the ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... with precipitancy in making war on Tippoo. But the charge is refuted by dates. The French proclamation was dated 10th Pluviose, sixth year of the Republic, (30th January 1798.) Its truth or falsehood was carefully enquired into, until the evidence was completed by despatches from the British governors of the Cape ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... and as she gazed as if the news were water to a thirsty soul—-'he sent his love, and begged his mother and you to forgive the distress his precipitancy has caused. I did not think him looking ill; indeed, I think the quiet of his cell is almost a rest to him, as he makes sure that he can ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to dislike them in a bunch. On the platform some fifteen men and women were already gathered. He seated himself modestly in the back row, while John Rudstock, less retiring, took his place at the chairman's right hand. The speakers began with a precipitancy hardly usual at a public meeting. Wilderton listened, and thought: "Dreadfully cliche; why can't someone say straight out that boys enough have been killed?" He had become conscious of a muttering noise, too, as of the tide coming in on a heavy wind; it broke suddenly into component parts—human ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... urgently, "I admit that I am disturbed by the precipitancy of the action that has been taken. I feel as if I were like some powerful djinni giving gifts which the recipients ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... reliable information that Mr. Diggles was confined to his bed with influenza, I ventured again to visit the sheds. I was advancing boldly across the field when to my consternation he suddenly appeared from behind a hayrick. I was so startled that I turned to fly, and in my precipitancy tripped on a tussock and fell. Mr. Diggles came to my assistance, and, when he had helped me to my feet and brushed me down with a birch broom he was carrying, I could do nothing less than buy another ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... it did not appear that such Provisional Government had the sanction of either popular revolution or suffrage. Two other remarkable features of the transaction naturally attracted attention. One was the extraordinary haste, not to say precipitancy, characterizing all the transactions connected with the treaty. It appeared that a so-called committee of safety, ostensibly the source of the revolt against the constitutional Government of Hawaii, was organized on Saturday, the 14th day of January; that on Monday, the 16th, ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... would have been quite content to waive explanations, but Edith was resolute that there should be no more kisses until she had been vindicated from all suspicion of precipitancy in the bestowal of her affections, and I was fain to follow the lovely enigma into the house. Having come where her mother was, she blushingly whispered something in her ear and ran away, leaving us together. It then ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... so desperate, that not the slightest hope remained for them, except what could arise from resorting to the aid of foreign arms to restore the King to the throne from which he had fled with the greatest precipitancy, without having made the slightest resistance. In fact the whole people were by this time completely sick of the Bourbons. The Despots of Europe, meanwhile, were in the greatest alarm, but they soon entered into a league to make war upon France ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... venial; nevertheless they are true failings and defects of which we must endeavour to correct ourselves, inasmuch as they are displeasing both to God and man. Such are propensities to anger, grief, joy, excessive laughter, flattery, favouritism, self-pity, suspicion, over-eagerness, precipitancy, and vain affections. We must strive to rid ourselves of those defects which, like weeds, spring up without being sown in the soil of our corrupt nature, and incline us to evil from ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... dripping heavily from the branches of the trees. I was just on the point of turning back to the road when one of our batteries concealed in the place opened fire, and a perfect hell of flame burst out around me. I flopped to earth with graceless precipitancy, and wallowed in mud. "It's all up 3008, you've done it now," I muttered, and wondered vaguely whether I was partly or wholly dead. The sharp smell of cordite filled the air and caused (p. 171) a tickling sensation in my throat that almost ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... same time intimating in a faint tone, that she did hear; for she had not entirely recovered from the embarrassment attendant on the precipitancy of her advent into ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... prepare to accompany him forthwith. The lovers, of course, were in despair at the thought of their approaching separation. In the end they secured their mutual fidelity by a hasty and private marriage. Reproved for his precipitancy and imprudence, Romney replied that his marriage would surely act as a spur to his application: 'My thoughts being now still and not obstructed by youthful follies, I can practise with more diligence and ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... likelihood of kindling an inextinguishable flame if I should admit any public and open contests; and I have grieved to see that some, who should have done their Majesties, and this Province, better service, have so far taken council of passion as to desire the precipitancy of these matters; these things have been improved by some to give me many interruptions in their Majesties service [which] has been hereby unhappily clogged, and the persons, who have made so ill improvement of these matters ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... watched him bear down upon one of the stumbling-blocks to which Berry had referred. The accuracy with which he approached it was almost uncanny. I found myself standing upon one leg.... The screech of anguish with which he hailed the collision, no less than the precipitancy with which he dropped the guitar, sat down and began to rock himself to ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... screwy motion, as though through an opening much too narrow for him, and, having poised a moment to nervously pull some imaginary object from his right boot and hurl it madly from him, goes unexpectedly off with the precipitancy and equilibriously concentric manner of a gentleman in his first ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... clambering here where there was no road, and in opposition to express orders that no path was to be made there. Tangs had momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff; but observing Mrs. Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of hail. His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrel to the bottom, his snuffbox rolling ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... she even disliked him. But then a young girl's likes and dislikes have, as a rule, small bearing on her practical content in the married state; so, at least, Mrs. Waltham's experience led her to believe. Only, it was clear that there must be no precipitancy. Let the ground ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... flattering herself that though at this moment she was little better than a maid of all work in a lodging-house, the time was soon coming in which she would bloom forth as a baronet's bride,—now in her solitude she almost regretted the precipitancy of her own conduct. Could it be that she would never see him again;—that she would dance no more in that gilded bright saloon? And might it not be possible that she had pressed him too hard? A baronet of course would ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... its Ally as an enemy: and,—though there are alleviations of its conduct in its great sufferings,—yet it must be remembered that these sufferings were due—not to the Gallicians—but to circumstances over which they had no controul—to the precipitancy of the retreat, the inclemency of the weather, and the poverty of the country; and that (knowing this) they must have had a double sense of injustice in any outrages of an English army, from, contrasting them with the professed objects of that army in entering Spain.—It is to be observed ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and confident; but they speak in the old angry tone which rarely accompanies deep and wise convictions. They do not meet the real difficulties; they mistake them, misrepresent them, claim victories over adversaries with whom they have never even crossed swords, and leap to conclusions with a precipitancy at which we can only smile. It has been the unhappy manner of their class from immemorial time; they call it zeal for the Lord, as if it were beyond all doubt that they were on God's side—as if serious enquiry after truth was something which they were entitled to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... conjectural insinuation. For our parts, we should have been the last amongst the biographers to unearth any forgotten scandal, or, after so vast a lapse of time, and when the grave had shut out all but charitable thoughts, to point any moral censures at a simple case of natural frailty, youthful precipitancy of passion, of all trespasses the most venial, where the final intentions are honorable. But in this case there seems to have been something more in motion than passion or the ardor of youth. "I like not," says Parson Evans, (alluding to Falstaff in masquerade,) "I like not when a woman has a great ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the shame; to us the dishonour. Theorists, indeed (wise after the fact, as is the wont of theorists), have discovered or invented an imaginary function for Second Chambers. They are to preserve the people, it seems, from the fatal consequences of their own precipitancy. As though the people—you and I—the vast body of citizens, were a sort of foolish children, to be classed with infants, women, criminals, and imbeciles (I adopt the chivalrous phraseology of ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... there are two forms, Precipitancy and Weakness: those who have it in the latter form though they have made resolutions do not abide by them by reason of passion; the others are led by passion because they have never formed any resolutions at all: while there are some who, like those who by ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... wonders what she can have done to offend 'her dear husband,' and I have been obliged to tell the smallest part of the truth—an unimportant fragment of the whole, in fact, I said that I feared for the moment he might regret the precipitancy of the act, which her illness caused, his affairs not having been quite sufficiently advanced for marriage just then, though he will doubtless come to her as soon as he has a home ready. Meanwhile I have written to him, peremptorily, ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... company—and she so sweet and kind to him—he began to take heart of grace once more, and his volatile mind whispered to his soul the hope that, after all, things might well be as he had first intended, if he but played his cards adroitly, and did not mar his chances by the precipitancy that had once gone near to losing him. His purpose gathered strength from a message that came that evening from Gian Maria, who was by then assured that Gonzaga's plan had failed. He sent word that, being unwilling to provoke ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... peculiar fellow, verging sometimes on silliness. He merely turned away. The vertiginous rapidity of his wife's developments, manoeuvres and transformations had dazed him into a sort of numbed idiocy. In two days, in a day, with no warning to him of her extraordinary precipitancy, ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... to dissuade him from his design, and after he had weighed her representations in all points, replied: "I own, mother, it is great rashness in me to presume to carry my pretensions so far; and a great want of consideration to ask you with so much heat and precipitancy to go and make the proposal to the sultan, without first taking proper measures to procure a favourable reception, and therefore beg your pardon. But be not surprised that through the violence of my passion I did not at first see every measure necessary to procure ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... North Carolina, not a single person has shown the hardihood to applaud their action. On the other hand, although treated with the utmost charity, their bravery applauded, they have been condemned for their rude precipitancy, besides failing to see the changed condition of affairs, and resenting the injuries they had received from the House of Hanover that had harried their country and hanged their relatives on the murderous gallows-tree. Their course, however, in the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... curious and mingled frame of mind. He was annoyed with himself, he reproached himself for his unpardonable precipitancy, his boyish impulsiveness. Some one has justly said: there is nothing more painful than the consciousness of ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... nations of the entire world, during the experience of three centuries, and apparently deepened by their advancing civilization. Give us rules and modifications, give us guides and correctives, give us warnings against excess, precipitancy, and neglect of other enjoyments, or of important duties, if you will. The urbane aestheticism that regulates pleasure also limits it; and true refinement ever modifies the indulgence it pervades. But it is emulating Mrs. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... some control over his passions; and if appetite had been the moving influence with him, he would scarcely, with the eyes of all the world fixed upon his conduct, have passed so extravagant an insult upon the nation of which he was the sovereign. The precipitancy with which he acted is to me a proof that he looked on matrimony as an indifferent official act which his duty required at the moment. This was the interpretation which was given to his conduct by the Lords and Commons of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... system itself you must attack and overthrow; not a mere instrument—a miserable painted lath such as this. And precipitancy will spoil everything. Above ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... exaggerated speed, but uniform speed—sustained speed—is the requisite of the battle fleet; that it is not machinery, as is often affirmed, but brains and guns, that win battles and control the sea. The true speed of war is not headlong precipitancy, but the unremitting energy which wastes ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... picture of Chopin, has described her own life and character as marked by 'a great facility for illusions, a blind benevolence of judgment, a tenderness of heart that was inexhaustible; consequently great precipitancy, many mistakes, much weakness, fits of heroic devotion to unworthy objects, enormous force applied to an end that was wretched in truth and fact, but sublime in her thought.' George Eliot had none of this facility. Nor was general benignity in her at all of the poor kind that is incompatible ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... manner, and now that the future, amid the hopeful calm which it sometimes assumes, will sometimes almost frown upon me with lowerings of fear? Fear it is, not of others, but of myself, and fear of the ignorance or precipitancy of my yet but very partially regulated mind. Oh for that other fear which only "is a fountain of life, preserving from the snares of death!" Oh for that love which casteth out the slavish fear, and maketh ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... pretense at eating. It was almost as if the Countess de Mattos were playing into her hands. It seemed too good to be true. She was afraid that something would happen to ruin all; that she would lose her head, and by her precipitancy put the other on her guard; yet the opportunity was too ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... and a discreet matron who might possibly be induced to marry again; and in doing she had thrown fire among tinder. Well, it was all as it should be, but she did feel perhaps a little put out by the precipitancy of her own success; and perhaps a little vexed at the readiness of Mrs Bold to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... repented of his precipitancy. In 1167 his bishops refused to disgrace themselves by transferring their obedience at the nod of their prince; and he was unwilling to involve himself in a new and apparently a hopeless quarrel. To disguise ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... equipment is the "good linen and clothing," a knowledge of French, Latin, and English, some skill in playing the violin, the organ, and the oboe, and an "uncommon precipitancy" in doing what there is ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... "The precipitancy of my demands upon your gate and your hospitality must have something of an air of impertinence," said Count Victor briskly, unbuckling his sword and laying it before him on the table; "but the cause of it lay with several ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... clear. But out of the tail of my eye I watched my good friend Stefano, and I saw his right hand steal round to the region of his back where I knew his dagger to be slung. Yet was I patient. There should be no blundering through an excessive precipitancy. I talked on until I saw that my suspicions were amply realised. I caught the cold gleam of steel in the hand that he brought back as stealthily as he had carried it to his poniard. Sant' Iddio! What a coward he was for all his bulk, to go so slyly about ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... their clime, within whose breast Flows pure and free the gushing stream of life.— What silent purpose broods within thy soul? Is it destruction? Let me perish first! For now, deliv'rance hopeless, I perceive The dreadful peril into which I have With rash precipitancy plung'd my friends. Alas! I soon shall see them bound before me! How to my brother shall I say farewell? I, the unhappy author of his death. Ne'er can I gaze again in his ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... perspective a dot was advancing. It resolved itself into horse and sleigh. Puffs of vapor from the steaming animal indicated the urgent precipitancy of its speed. ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... Errors of observation; such as arise for instance from inexpertness, defective vision, slowness in seizing the exact instant of the occurrence of a phenomenon, or precipitancy in anticipating it; from atmospheric indistinctness, insufficient optical power in the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... moment he ascertained this, he felt himself the victim of a plot; but not all the whispers of prudence could hold him now from seeing the adventure through. Loudly he flung back the little gate, with rash precipitancy entered: and as he sprang up the three steps ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall—this rushing annihilation—for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination—for this very ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... understanding and the early development of imagination never permitted him to mingle in childish plays; and his natural aversion to tyranny prevented him from paying due attention to his school duties. But he was always actively employed; and although his endeavours were prosecuted with puerile precipitancy, yet his aim and thoughts were constantly directed to those great objects which have employed the thoughts of the greatest among men; and though his studies were not followed up according to school ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds |
